Animals and Science

What exactly does a focus on animals bring to anthropological studies of science? This is a question that the various contributors to this edited collection set out to answer. This range of studies explores the intersections between animals and science across different ethnographic settings and in different historical periods. The contributions to this volume look at what it means to be human, the place of human beings vis a vis other species on this planet, our ideas of what nature and culture are, the limits to our ideas of kinship, the ethical debates that surround science, together with their interpretation by both scientific communities and the lay public, and the moral comportment of scientists. Through focusing on science, our contributors not only demonstrate that people elsewhere have different relationships with, and knowledge of, beasts (and that different possibilities of relating to animals exist within our own Western worldview), but further suggest that our Western knowledge about animals and their positions in society, arrived at through Western science and the social sciences, is itself in need of rethinking-to incorporate other ways of knowing. This volume contends that accounts in which animals meet science provide important theoretical insights for anthropologists and can set new agendas for theory in anthropology and science studies.